The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5214, 7 December 1877, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1877.

A strong feeling is rising in the community with regard to the refusal of licenses to the Princess Theatre Hotel, Mr. Duff’s hotel in Cuba-street, and the Tramway Terminus Hotel, and we have been informed that a memorial is about to be presented to the Minister for Justice requesting him to inquire into the administration "of the Licensing Court, and to infuse, if necessary, new blood into the Licensing Bench, where, it must be admitted, men more inclined to act in accordance with the progress of the times ;.ve required. It is thought by the public (mid we must say we endorse their opinion) that it is ridiculous that Mr. Plimmer’s or the Old Identities, or whatever he may choose to call it, hotel should have been licensed, when licenses to other hotels apparently equally entitled to them have been refused. It is also thought absurd —still more absurd—that the Licensing Bench should have laid it down as a principle that high class hotels should be, as it were, clustered together near the busy and most central part of the town. All travellers do not arrive in Wellington by water, neither do they all desire to live during their stay close to the business portion of the city, and undergo smells, high prices, and inconveniences. Lots of country people come to Wellington who wish to reside during their sojourn at Te Aro, or at Thorndon end, or even in the Tinakori direction, but the possibility of the existence of such travellers is not dreamt of in the philosophy of the wise Licensing Commissioners. It is pretty well known that the Princess Theatre Hotel cost £SOOO, and if what is pretty well known be pretty well true, then it seems to us simply monstrous that the Licensing Bench should practically render waste and stale and unprofitable such a legitimate expenditure of capital in a neighborhood where hotel accommodation of a highclass is conspicuous by its absence. The same arguments apply in the case of Mr. Duff's and Mr. Moody’s hotels. The refusal of licenses to them by the Commissioners is simply the result of these gentlemen fetching with them to the Bench their private crotchets, and an inclination to legislate against the growth and progress of the town by a mode of checking intemperance wholly fanciful in its-inception and its results. If the hotels we have mentioned could have been shown to have been unnecessary, more particularly in the case of Mr. Hargetts and Mr. Moody, if these gentlemen could have been shown to have been unfit to conduct a licensed house, we could have understood the decisions of the Licensing Bench on Tuesday. But we cannot understand them. They are not legal decisions (with all due deference to the Commissioners bo it spoken). They are a kind of improvised Maine Liquor Law, without legislative sanction, without the decision of the people. They tend to create a monopoly which will render drink poisonous because it can be sold without fear of competition.